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The praise for AMD comes from releasing the documentation (what the community kept shouting about for ages). They did. They also help develop open source drivers, quite a lot, in addition to constant improvement of the binary drivers. This is far more than what people were requesting, and yet people are still unhappy about it.
However, of course driver development from nvidia and AMD has the focus on windows - why wouldn't they? That's where the bulk of the money is.
Can't say what nvidia does (it's likely something similar), but AMD actually provide more resources per market share percentage to Linux than to Windows. It's just that that Windows market share is much larger.

. They're just utilizing the Windoze driver (as I understand it) and reverse engineer it themself or since they have all the code at their disposal

Wait, nVidia is reverse-engineering their own binary driver?

This is the "true story"?

But, what irks me is that all these ATI apologists come on here and praise AT

I praise ATi because they provide documentation and write free drivers. NVidia does not. Period.

In the last few years, ATi has gone from no open source drivers whatsoever to high-quality OpenGL 2 drivers with power savings, and have contributed to the linux kernel, Mesa, X and Gallium3D.

How can you not praise this? What is wrong with you?

The actual state of the different drivers is a separate, also important issue. And while the open drivers will soon be perfectly fine for the vast majority of Linux desktop uses, there is still lots of improvement potential. But how can you not praise the efforts? How can you berate it?

For a decade, people have been shouting for open specifications ("...and we'll write the drivers!"), open drivers, open protocols. Slashdot was brewing with it every time there was an X or graphics article. The company which released the open specs would earn the adoration of the Free Software community, and so on.

Then AMD releases full specs, writes a reference driver, contributes code to all these open source projects, gives support to the community to improve on the drivers, and we end up with a fully usable stack compatible with the latest kernels, latest x version, with powersaving and 3D acceleration. In short, they do the RIGHT THING (tm).

For a decade, people have been shouting for open specifications ("...and we'll write the drivers!"), open drivers, open protocols. Slashdot was brewing with it every time there was an X or graphics article. The company which released the open specs would earn the adoration of the Free Software community, and so on.

Then AMD releases full specs, writes a reference driver, contributes code to all these open source projects, gives support to the community to improve on the drivers, and we end up with a fully usable stack compatible with the latest kernels, latest x version, with powersaving and 3D acceleration. In short, they do the RIGHT THING (tm).

And what do they get? "My WorKRaft don't workZ! Fuk you AMD!"

It's depressing.

But aren't even the most ardent of nVidia faboi happy that AMD releases details and aids open drivers.

Clearly AMD is the more open source friendly company.

The problem isn't who's more open, it's will my system work the way I want it to.

If you want to know the 'real smoking gun explenation' of 'why AMD/ATI is making crappy FLOSS drivers', it is because:
1. They are not making crappy drivers;
2. Optimisation needs to be done;
3. DRM, copyright, IP and patents.
EDIT: oh and 4 it aint all done yet.

You see, what it comes down to is that AMD could easily FLOSSify fglrx, if only there wasn't such a rediculous concept of IP and patents, and greedy digital restriction MPAA and RIAA companies out there. Go knock on their doors and (if you were to actually do this) give them hell.